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2015 MLS Position Income Inequality

Today, I want to finish measuring income inequality in MLS by looking at how salaries are distributed by player position.  Taking the data from MLSPU, I have found for each player (except one) their position and then evaluated the level of income inequality by each position.  For players that are listed at multiple positions I have included them for each position.

Last year the position with the most equal salary were goal keepers and the most unequal were forwards.  This season goal keepers are still the most equal, but now midfielders are the most unequal.  Here is the Gini coefficients for this season using MLSPU's data.

Pos	Base Salary		Guaranteed Comp.
D	0.4137		0.4183
F	0.6844		0.6772
GK	0.3457		0.3518
M	0.7108		0.7109

As you can see midfielder are twice as unequal as goal keepers.  Defenders are close to goal keepers and forwards are close to midfielders for the league as a whole.

Prior posts on 2015 MLS Income Inequality:
MLS Team Income Inequality
MLS Overall Income Inequality

2015 MLS Team Income Inequality

Yesterday's I examined income inequality in Major League Soccer for the current season in terms of all players listed on the Major League Soccer Players Union salary release and I noted that income inequality has been increasing during the past three seasons.  Today, I want to look at the level of income inequality at the team level.

So looking at each MLS club here are the measures of income inequality for the 2015 season using the data from the MLSPU in the table below.

Team		Base Salary Gini		Guaranteed. Compensation Gini
CHI		0.564		0.560
CLB		0.342		0.371
COL		0.459		0.463
DAL		0.346		0.337
DC		0.377		0.394
HOU		0.436		0.448
KC		0.460		0.450
LA		0.777		0.774
MTL		0.367		0.368
NE		0.619		0.625
NY		0.419		0.450
NYCFC		0.777		0.772
ORL		0.740		0.739
PHI		0.422		0.420
POR		0.495		0.485
RSL		0.409		0.414
SEA		0.713		0.732
SJ		0.476		0.483
TOR		0.784		0.790
VAN		0.509		0.503

From the table above notice that TOR (Toronto) has the most amount of salary inequality followed closely by LA, NYCFC, ORL and SEA.  In terms of income equality, CLB (Columbus) is the most equal followed by DAL, MTL and DC.

Over the last few seasons here are two charts of team Gini coefficients (excluding NYCFC).  The first chart is team by team Gini coefficients for Base Salary.

The second is team by team Gini coefficients for Guaranteed Compensation.

While there has been some variation in how equal (or unequal) salaries are distributed among MLS clubs, overall many teams have similar levels of Gini coefficients; most likely due to long term contracts for relatively high paid MLS players.

Major League Soccer and Income Inequality

Over the last few years there has been greater awareness of income inequality, with trends showing that income inequality is rising here in the US.  I have previously looked at income inequality in Major League Soccer as well as Major League Baseball, NCAA Athletic Department Revenue and NCAA football bowl subdivision bowl revenue.  Here is how to calculate the Gini coefficient.  The Gini coefficient is bound between zero and one, with a zero Gini coefficient meaning that income in perfectly equal and a Gini coefficient equal to one meaning that income is perfectly unequal.

Recently the Major League Soccer Players Union has released players salaries, and mirroring this is the degree of income inequality in Major League Soccer.  In fact not only are salaries in MLS more unequal but the degree of salary inequality has been increasing.  I will only be looking at the players salaries for the 2013, 2014 and 2015 seasons.

		Gini Coefficient
Season		Base Salary	Guaranteed Comp.
2013		0.5197	0.5294
2014		0.6064	0.6141
2015		0.6487	0.6492

As you can see in the table above, in both base salary and guaranteed compensation the Gini coefficient has been increasing in MLS, or that MLS salaries are becoming more unequal.